Publish at January 15 2025 Updated January 15 2025
When the cold weather arrives, it's essential to keep your home warm and comfortable. However, as we all know, we're often urged to turn down the heating even in winter, so as not to over-consume energy unnecessarily, and also to reduce our electricity bill. In this video, the Skeptical Cat reacts to a fictitious message from a web surfer who doesn't want to limit his electricity consumption, because Newton's cooling law means that changes to the bill are "minuscule".
We've been introduced to the English physicist's law, which states that a hot element will, unsurprisingly, cool faster if the temperature difference is greater. A 50-degree coffee will lose its heat faster outside in -10 degrees than in a 19-degree house. This cooling will slow down as the temperatures approach each other. Technically, the Internet user is not wrong in saying that the difference between heating a house to 20 degrees or 17 degrees leads to a 10% difference on the bill.
However, as the capsule points out, this would be ignoring the effect of a 10% reduction on a bill of tens or hundreds of euros. Which reminds us to be careful with percentages. A disease that kills only 0.1% of those infected would be considered benign... if it wasn't highly contagious. But if 100% of the population is infected, hundreds of thousands will die worldwide. Conversely, boasting of a 50% reduction in accidents in a neighborhood where there were only 4 the previous year is not all that extraordinary. In short, it's better to heat less, and turn to solutions that warm the body rather than the home.
Running time: 8:52
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